Calling GE an appliance company is like calling Apple an earbud company.

It is/was one of the largest maker of electric power generation, defense stuff (like most of the engines in submarines, aircraft carriers, jet engines etc), medical equipment, plastics, communications etc. It pioneered many industries. NBC (one of the big 3 TV broadcasters today) was formed by GE.

GE, in its day, was THE company in the USA. In 2000, GE was the largest market cap company in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric

Viruses don't have brains, they don't "want" to do anything. Because they don't have brains, they don't "know" what is happening to the host - they can't react to what their host is doing.

Lots of times, say the flu, viruses kill because the hosts immunity system goes into overdrive. It can be the immunity system that is the actual cause of death.

The problem is that this is very uncharted territory - socially, economically etc. Japan is not a small country - it still has 125 million people and it is fairly wealthy by global standards.

A "home" cannot be thought of simply as walls, rooms and a roof. Think about all the other things that come with it - roads, electricity, water, sewage etc. You'll need shops, hospitals, police, government etc to support a community. So you cannot take a simplistic view that all of this "comes for free" or "will always exist".

Infrastructure and social services need a workforce. Power stations grow old and need maintenance and replacement. Roads don't repair themselves. People need to eat. People get sick and get into accidents.

How does a large country provide for this if 40% of their citizens are retired and need additional care? Can the working population grow enough food, make enough product, etc etc if this happens?

This is essentially the Chevy Volt from 12 years ago. An ICE to charge up batteries with no direct engine to wheel connection.

Constant RPM on an engine isn't going to increase the running efficiency so much that it offsets carrying 200kg of additional batteries ( or supercapacitors).

Isn't the question you're asking also part of the problem? You want some external force to impose accountability? How does that work?

Do you see the average American voting sensibly? Do Americans educate themselves on how the world works, understand trade offs, make rational choices between the options available?

There probably are people out there trying to do good even in the political arena? Are you one of them? If you're not, do you try to identify them and support them?

Don't like rich businesspeople - set up a company and run it the way you think companies should be run.

Anything you see right now is a past event. It is just that for most human day to day activity, light travels so fast that this "past" is a very very small bit of time.

If someone stands 10 meters away from you and throws a ball, you would only see (from your perspective) the ball leaving their hand 1/30000000 of a second after they (from the thrower's perspective) throw the ball.

The further the distance, the longer the time difference between when you see it and when the event happens.

This would be the subject of a whole textbook. Very simplified.

In order to maintain a union of states (like the USSR), every state must have their mutual benefits. For Russia to maintain control over the USSR, it had to give benefits to the individual countries while taking some benefits for itself.

There came a time when Russia could no longer maintain this financially. At this point, the individual states no longer wanted to remain as part of the union and Russia wasn't in a position militarily or diplomatically to enforce their rule over so many countries all at the same time.

Yes. From any reputable and regulated maker of whiskey, if they claim the whiskey is XX years old, it has to be aged at least XX years.

A large distillery probably makes a thousand barrels a day and a small one perhaps tens of barrels a day.

There is a standard called UST which every country can reference which will be the same no matter where one is in the world.

It simply isn't very convenient. Most societies have adopted a convention and cultural references that are more amenable to local time standards. (for example things like "9 to 5". etc)

As there is no requirement or law forcing countries or peoples to adopt UST, the choice is really theirs. It might suck that you don't like it but people don't really have to make things easy for you.

This is comparing two different types of things. GDP is a flow (how much per year). Net worth is a stock (the value of what one owns). They are not fundamentally comparable.

If you owned 10 apples and a farmer owns 1 apple tree, who has more? How is the comparison made?

Once a buyout offer is accepted at some price per share, then all the registered shareholders are notified and paid for the shares they own. The shares are then nullified. In effect, the shareholders at the time of the buyout are paid by the buyer according to the terms of the purchase. The payment could be cash, shares in another company or some combination thereof.

It isn't renewable as in "it can be used again". The term renewable is to distinguish it from non-renewable energy which is energy from fossil fuel which the earth has a limited supply of.

Most renewable energy is sourced directly or indirectly from the sun which is, for all practical human purposes, an unlimited source of energy.

Direct solar is energy captured through solar panels. Indirect sources are like wind (caused by the sun heating the atmosphere), hydropower (sun evaporating water to cause rain that forms rivers that can be dammed) or biomass (plants that grow because of sunlight and used as fuel).

"renewable" energy not from the sun would be something like geothermal energy. It isn't strictly renewable but there is a lot of it, if we can tap it.

There is no guarantee of GDP (a proxy and not always accurate measure of progress) growth in any particular locality over any particular period of time.

In very broad terms though:

a) populations are still increasing. More people implies more resources to do things. It also implies more people needing goods and services like food, shelter etc.

b) education and healthcare is generally improving. Healthier and more educated populations are expected to be more productive and for longer

c) technological progress and deployment is increasingly global. More efficient and better utilization of resources will generally increase output for a given amount of input

In short, although unlimited growth is not sustainable, there is not any good reason to believe humanity has peaked in terms of producing goods and services. Of course wars, pandemics, asteroid strikes and devastating changes to the environment might one day cause that but that is far beyond anyone's ability to predict.

In the long long term, of course, not even the sun is expected to live forever, so there is probably an end-point to humanity's survival on this planet.